The abrupt end of Utrecht
astronomy
in early 2012, 370 years after
its start, had nothing to do with the track record or prospects of the
Sterrekundig Instituut Utrecht
(SIU) as partner in the
Netherlands Research School for Astronomy
(NOVA). It arose from personal
prejudice in the Utrecht University (UU) board that there was too much
astronomy in The Netherlands. Too much of a good thing, they seem to
have thought, since astronomy is an activity in which Holland excels
exceptionally, far beyond its GNP. In fact they killed Utrecht
astronomy just when the Dutch government awarded 25 million Euro extra
funding to Dutch astronomy (i.e., NOVA, including the SIU astronomers
and actually with UU as formal NOVA lead agency at the time) after an
international evaluation committee had judged NOVA to be one of the
only two "exemplary" research schools of all disciplines nation-wide
in The Netherlands. The ex-SIU staff now partakes in this renewed
NOVA funding from their new bases at other Dutch universities
(Amsterdam, Leiden, Nijmegen). Most kept their tenure in this
relocation and took their external funding, postdocs and graduate
students along. In total, two dozen astronomers moved from Utrecht to
other NOVA sites. Others moved abroad. Their research continues, but
gone are the superb Utrecht astrophysics education
program
(with the largest
student/fte ratio of the NOVA institutes) and the famous
Utrecht solar research
(effectively all Dutch solar physics).

A direct consequence of the closure of the SIU was that the planned
bundling of NOVA's optical and infrared astronomy instrumentation
groups at Utrecht fell through. Another consequence is that the
Dutch institute for space research (SRON)
decided to move from Utrecht to Amsterdam. The
termination of astronomy didn't even improve the UU budget because the
gain from firing the 10 SIU fte's amounted to less than the losses in
direct government funding (for student influx and PhD production) and
indirect and external funding (from NOVA, NWO, TNO, STW, EC, ERC, ESA,
NSF, NASA).

The worst aspect was the diminishing emphasis on science at Utrecht
University. The Dutch economy should become a "knowledge" economy,
but this rosy goal is severely hampered by severe undereducation in
the technical and exact sciences. The overall quality is still high
but the volume is much smaller per capita or GNP than in comparable
(and competing) countries. Cutting down on a prestigious exact
science in which the Dutch excel extraordinarily and which attracts
more public attention than any other (with NOVA's outreach program
exemplary as well) is a bad mistake with respect to inspiring bright
high-school pupils to choose an exact-science education. Counter
example: at Nijmegen University (which accepted half of the SIU's
staff, a sizable increase of its astronomy department) the restart of
astronomy substantially increased the influx of physics students.
Utrecht University indeed suffered the reverse.
Not a win-win strategy but a lose-lose lack of perspective.
At the SIU's formal burial ceremony in the packed
UU aula, SIU
director C.U. Keller reminded the audience that the most abundant
element in the universe after hydrogen is stupidity.

How did the closure come about? It seems that in 2010 the notoriously
autonomous UU board ("College van Bestuur", CvB, a dictatorial body
operating without checks or balances) decided that the SIU was too
small for a Masters-education discipline and proposed in secret to
move the similar-sized Amsterdam and Nijmegen astronomy departments to
Utrecht - meeting indignant rebuttal. What happened thereafter is
detailed in this account by C.U. Keller. The CvB set up a secret evaluation
panel which advised to maintain the SIU; in December 2010 the CvB
signed an agreement to do so and strengthen the SIU. However, in June
2011 the CvB decided to kill it, without consulting anybody wherever.
Its non-disclosed motivation seems to have been that Utrecht
University would profile itself favorably by not doing what others do
- i.e., by single-handedly withdrawing from this nation-wide,
exemplary, government-endorsed, student-attracting, top-level science
endeavour. The CvB ignored the government's acclaim for NOVA and
desire for more exact-science students. It literally shut its door
and telephone to the NOVA directors even though it was the formal NOVA
lead agency. It forced a new science-division dean (replacing one who
resigned in protest to the CvB's science policies) to terminate the
SIU, against his own judgment. Its only public announcement was,
hypocritically, that it "respected the dean's decision".

Upshot: Utrecht astronomy
is gone, including Utrecht (read Dutch) solar
physics. UU astronomy
education
ended in June
2012. No more interest in the Universe at Utrecht "University" (it
scrapped its subscriptions of the major astronomy journals). Less
student attractivity. No more well-educated UU astronomy alumni
enriching society. No more UU astronomy outreach - in which Utrecht
astronomers were particularly active ever since Minnaert; the group
that went to Leiden won the national Academische
Jaarprijs
for science popularization soon after their move.

By the end of 2011 the CvB had also announced new overall priority
themes for Utrecht University: "sustainability", "life sciences",
"institutions" [sic], "youth & identity" [sic]. In this vision the
exact (beta) sciences vanish apart from "useful" applications such as
medical and climate physics. UU's much-touted relatively high
Shanghai ranking was earned in hard natural sciences, in particular
theoretical physics and crystallography. Nevertheless, in 2011 UU's
administration also contemplated termination of theoretical physics
and pure mathematics. A climate in which the best researchers leave
first, as indeed happened in these fields (they went to Nijmegen).
Utrecht University goes soft and mediocre.

The responsible CvB chair, Yvonne van Rooy, had a humanities-only
(gymnasium-alpha) education, characteristic of high-school pupils
that stumble over mathematics and physics to become specimens of
C.P. Snow's classic "Two Cultures" syndrome: intellectuals who proudly
assert that not knowing the second law of thermodynamics is an asset
to their intellectuality. She left Utrecht University in 2012,
leaving as heritage the dramatic plunge of Utrecht
University quality that she initiated:

Why do astronomy? ESA's answer (long-range plan): "Astronomy, the
understanding of our Universe and mankind's place in the Universe,
is the mother of all science. Lack of interest in basic science, in
addition to the devastating economic effects it has - no basic
science means no applications - is always the symptom of profound
diseases of any society."
The graph above demonstrates UU's profound disease.